…In July, 48-year-old Xie Zaixing, a local Communist Party chief in Zhejiang province, was sentenced to death for fatally choking his young mistress, chopping her body up and dumping her remains into a river.

And on Dec. 5, Gu Qingyang, a county postmaster in central Henan province, was driving drunk late at night on the wrong side of the road when, police say, he plowed into a group of seven teenagers walking along the road, killing five of them instantly.

Such incidents have deeply embarrassed China’s ruling Communist Party, which promotes itself on its Web site as the “faithful representative” of the Chinese people. In several of the cases, the mistresses had threatened to expose the officials for corruption.

Critics, including academics and the growing community of online activists, say the incidents illustrate a widespread sense of impunity among powerful local party officials. The rising public anger over official misdeeds, some add, poses a direct threat to the leadership’s goal of maintaining “social harmony.”